Context-based access control for ridesharing service

The paper describes a context-based access control model for a ridesharing service. Ridesharing is a shared use of a car by the driver and one or more passengers for a joint trip. The service is based on the smart space concept. For this purpose the Smart-M3 platform is used. Currently the Smart-M3 platform doesn´t have an appropriate access control mechanism meeting the following requirements: supporting a flexible, descriptive and well-defined policy language and taking into consideration the context information. Therefore, the usage of the context-based access control model has been proposed. This model is built as a combination of the role-based and attribute-based access control models. It uses roles, which are assigned dynamically based on the user´s context, and meets the requirements to the access control in the smart space. An analysis of information transfer through the ridesharing service modules is used for defining the user´s context. The model has been implemented within an access control broker, which controls the access to the smart space resources.